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The Return of the Nightingale

James C. McKusick University of Montana - Missoula, [email protected]

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The Return of the Nightingale

James C. McKusick University of Montana

In Ecological Literary Criticism (1994), Karl Kroeber ad­ The nightingale that often appears in Romantic poetry vocated a bold new approach to the study of literature. More is more than a literary motif. It is, to begin with, a migratory than just another routine method of textual analysis, ecologi­ Old World bird of the thrush family (turdidae), renowned cal literary criticism seeks to bridge the gap between the nat­ throughout the world and literature, for its remarkable sing­ ural sciences and the humanities. Such an approach ing. The common nightingale of England and Western Eu­ incorporates theoretical advances in the science of environ­ rope, known in Linnaean terminology as Luscinia mental biology while it adapts to the changing social and po­ megarhynchos, is a small and inconspicuous bird, about 61/2 litical circumstances of contemporary criticism. In Karl inches long, with reddish-brown coloring on its upper body, Kroeber's view, an ecologically oriented literary criticism and grayish-brown below. It migrates to Africa for the winter, "seizes opportunities offered by recent biological research to returning to England in mid-April. Only the male sings, and make humanistic studies more socially responsible" (1). only during the breeding season, at any time of day or night. Kroeber's landmark book was the first of several important The female bird is silent, but she plays an active role in the studies that gave rise to ecocriticism as a distinctive literary social realm of nightingales because she chooses a mate on theory for the twenty-first century. the basis of his singing. Although the male is the singer, the female nightingale exerts the sexual power; the male pro­ poses, and she disposes. The most memorable chapters of Kroeber's book were concerned with the close reading of Romantic poems from In ancient Greek and Roman poetry, however, the an ecological point of view. His reading of Wordsworth's nightingale was virtually always personified as a female "Lines Written in Early Spring" best exemplifies what this ap­ singer, and the identification of the nightingale with the fe­ proach can accomplish. Often dismissed as a dogmatic dis­ male gender has been stable throughout literary history, play of ingenuous nature-worship, this poem nevertheless stubbornly at variance with the facts. From Homer and Aes­ reveals an unsuspected thematic complexity in its portrayal chylus through Sappho and Virgil, all the way to Milton and of the relationship between nature and human society. Ac­ Keats, the nightingale has been personified as a beautiful, cording to Kroeber, the poem "challenges our learned cul­ melancholy, and often seductive female presence. In the Od­ tural presupposition that human consciousness alienates us yssey, Homer compares Penelope to Philomela, an unfortu­ from physical nature" ( 45). Stressing the hypothetical, ques­ nate woman who was transformed by Zeus into a nightingale tioning tone of the poem, Kroeber scrutinizes its enigmatic out of pity for her sad plight. The same story is recounted by last lines: "Have I not reason to lament I What man has many Classical poets, memorably by Ovid, who relates a de­ made of man?" He suggests that these lines refer not only to tailed version of the myth in Metam01phoses, Book 4. This ver­ the stubborn persistence of social injustice, but also to the sion of the myth was the most influential upon later poets. way that our "self-injuries may be rooted in a miseducation of ourselves away from linkages through pleasure with benefi­ According to Ovid, Philomela, on the way to visit her cent natural processes" ( 45). In this way, the poem encour­ sister Procne, was taken into a remote wood and raped by ages readers to adopt an essentially ecological understanding Tereus, King of Thrace and Procne's husband. The evil Te­ of their relation to the natural world. Kroeber's ecological reus then cuts out Philomela's tongue to silence her, and approach to the reading of poetry appears especially ground­ confines her in a remote forest dwelling. While confined, breaking and visionary in light of the environmental con­ Philomela weaves her story into a tapestry and sends it to her cerns that have come to pose a distinct threat to the ultimate sister Procne, who sets her free. The two sisters return to survival of humankind. Thrace, and tale a terrible revenge on Tereus by killing his son, Itys, and serving him to his father in a cannibal stew. This essay will examine the perennial poetic theme of When he realizes what Procne and Philomela have done, Te­ the nightingale from an ecocritical perspective, informed by reus attacks them with an axe; but Zeus chooses intervenes Kroeber's insightful methods of ecological close reading. I and turns them all into birds: Tereus into a hoopoe, Procne am interested in the nightingale, not only as a literary topos, into a nightingale, Philomela into a swallow, and Itys into a or commonplace, but also as a biological organism that goldfinch. thrives in a specific habitat. Ecological literary criticism de­ votes special attention to the relation of poetry to actual Ovid's ending of the tale moves outside the main­ places, and to actual biotic communities - real birds singing stream since he turns Philomela into a swallow. In most in real trees. To what extent does the nightingale topos em­ other versions of the myth, Philomela is turned into a night­ body the lived experience of poets listening to the song of an ingale; and throughout literary history, the song of the night­ actual bird? ingale has been regarded as an expression of Philomela's sad

34 plight - her story of being raped, taken prisoner, having her public preferment and rumored affection for Ralegh lends tongue cut out by her captor; and her redemption through the poem a latent erotic theme. Although the nightingale in art, the weaving of a tapestry, the feature of the tale that most this poem is masculine, the bird is presented as a seducer, appealed to Homer. the Queen's forbidden lover. The erotic dimension of the nightingale theme will persist through many Romantic Throughout Classical literary tradition, the nightingale retellings. is associated with Philomela, and the burden of her song is her loss of voice, and her cruel betrayal by a man whom she In ancient Greek, the word aedon means nightingale, trusted. Geoffrey Hartman, in "Evening Star and Evening poet, and poetry- these senses are completely interchangea­ Land," one of the best essays ever written on the nightingale, ble and can all be present at once (Williams 21). So too describes the "philomel moment" in English poetry as "the post­ Spenser, by addressing Ralegh as a nightingale, also means prophetic moment, when the theme of loss merges with that that he is a poet. The final couplet expresses Spenser's aspi­ of voice -when, in fact, a 'lost voice' becomes the subject or ration to follow in Ralegh's footsteps, to become a talented moving force of poetic song" (164). Hartman's essay is com­ singer of courtly songs: ''Yet till that thou thy Poeme wilt pelling, but one-sided in its emphasis upon "lost voice." make knowne, I Let thy faire Cinthias praises bee thus rudely What's missing in Hartman's argument is the positive range showne" (13-14). The line represents the young Spenser as a of emotion the nightingale calls forth; throughout literary "rude" singer, just setting out on his career, aspiring to be­ history, the nightingale always entailed both loss and recom­ come a poet with the talent, the panache of his precursor. pense. Sappho, for example, in a poetic fragment, evokes The theme of poetic vocation is interwoven with the desire to the nightingale's joyful aspect, calling it "the messager of write songs of praise for "Cinthia" (Elizabeth), figured here spring, the sweet voiced nightingale." Especially in Romantic as a moon-goddess. Although conventional in its handling of poetry, the nightingale connotes not only heartache and the nightingale motif, the poem plays upon many of its the­ grief, but also renewed vitality; not only autumnal melan­ matic possibilities: poetic vocation, erotic desire, and melan­ choly, but also springtime rejoicing. choly moonlight.

Not only were the Classical poets fascinated by the After the Renaissance, with the return of Classical nightingale; the natural historian Pliny the Elder was in­ learning, and in defiance of natural history, the nightingale trigued by it and describes its song in meticulous detail (His­ reverted to being a female presence in poetry. Why is the toria Naturalis, Book 10, chapter 43). He states that each nightingale so persistently gendered as female? I believe this individual nightingale can sing more than one song, and that bird embodies an archetype that is transhistorical and largely they engage in singing contests. By implication, the bird's unconscious, and consequently more powerful than mere song is not merely generic; it is highly individualized, and empirical precision. The perennial voice of the nightingale differs from day to day, or even from moment to moment. is intensely fascinating, even hypnotic in its power to evoke Here is another reason that the nightingale motif appeals profound feelings in the listener, the poet, and the reader, strongly to Romantic poets: as a sentient creature, the night­ and to suggest the possibility of transcendence or escape ingale is active in the moment of creation, and it manifests from the earthly realm. The nightingale invites the beholder poetic imagination by varying its song to fit different moods to explore something beyond the merely human. But at the and circumstances. Although he offers accurate information same time, as Keats suggests in "Ode to a Nightingale," the about the nightingale's song, Pliny nevertheless assumes (er­ bird can be dangerous in its allurement. Like other seduc­ roneously) that the singer is a female bird. tive females in Keats's poetry, such as Lamia or La Belle Dame Sans Merci, the nightingale can enchant men, lure them away During the medieval period, a counter-tradition from daytime responsibilities, drain them of masculine po­ emerged in Latin verse, in which the bird was described as tency or power to act, and finally leave them helpless in a masculine, a singer of beautiful songs that announce the arri­ deathlike state. In this respect the nightingale resembles the val of the spring. By the Renaissance, the nightingale could Sirens in Homer's Odyssey, or the Lorelei of German folk-tales, be either masculine or feminine, depending on the prefer­ who sing with such unspeakable beauty that they lure sailors ence of the poet and the occasion of the poem. Thus Spen­ to their death by shipwreck on the rocks. Like other seduc­ ser, in a sonnet to Sir Walter Ralegh, addressed him as a tresses in Keats, the nightingale bears a family resemblance nightingale, without connoting any feminine qualities. The to Spenser's Duessa, an enchantress who is finally revealed to som-iet dates from Spenser's early acquaintance with Ralegh be half woman, half snake. Coleridge's Geraldine belongs to in the 1580s, at the height of Ralegh's success as a courtly the same family; as she seduces the helpless, innocent poet. Entitled "To the right noble and valorous knight, Sir Christabel, Geraldine lets fall her garments, only to reveal an Walter Raleigh," Spenser's sonnet brings into view the night­ unspeakable hybrid body, "a sight to dream of, not to tell": ingale as a figure of poetic relationship, and of poetic voca­ part woman, part snake. tion. The poem is addressed "To thee that are the sommers Nightingale, I Thy soueraine Goddesses most deare delight" Milton plays an important transitional role in the de­ (1-2). The "soueraine Goddess" is Queen Elizabeth, whose velopment of this archetype. His sonnet, "0 Nightingale,

35 ------,

that on yon bloomy spray" (1645), offers a playful contrast poet, and for Oedipus at Colonus. The word "darkling," between the nightingale, whose voice portends success in which evokes the nightingale in its nocturnal habitat, will re­ love, and the "shallow Cuccoo," a "rude Bird of Hate" whose cur in later poetic representations of the bird, always bearing name suggests cuckoldry, surely the last thing that a lover some trace of its Miltonic origin. (To be sure, Shakespeare wants. The ribald pun on cuckoo/cuckold harks back to uses the word "darkling" in King Lear l.iv.217, but not with Shakespeare's comedies, but the tone becomes elevated in reference to the nightingale.) Perhaps the most important the last two lines, where Milton boldly declares his own po­ epithet ever attached to the nightingale in its entire literary etic calling: history, "darkling" means both "in the dark" and "of the dark." In some magical and mysterious fashion, the bird's Whether the Muse, or Love call thee his mate, very presence takes on the power of darkness. Later, the Both them I serve, and of their train am I. epithet "darkling" will gradually be transferred from the bird (13-14) to the poet, so that Keats will finally declare, "Darkling I lis­ ten" ("Ode to a Nightingale," 51). Indeed, such a process of Milton returns to the theme of the nightingale in "II Penser­ transference is already underway in this passage from Paradise oso" ( 1645), where he refers explicitly to the myth of Lost, since it is not only the bird that sings "darkling," but Philomel: also the poet, who sings out of his blindness - he is in the dark, and of the dark. 'Less Philomel will deign a Song, In her sweetest, saddest plight, Milton's poetic representation of the nightingale had a Smoothing the mgged brow of night, profound, but delayed impact on British literary tradition. While Cynthia checks her Dragon yoke Charlotte Smith's first book of poetry, Elegaic Sonnets (1784), Gently o'er th' accustom'd Oak; was remarkable both for its revival of the Petrarchan sonnet Sweet Bird that shunn'st the noise of folly form (virtually extinct in English poetry since the time of Most musical, most melancholy! (56-62) Milton) and for the precision and intensity of its nature im­ agery. Born into wealth, Smith attended the best schools The rich rhyme of "folly" and "melancholy," which might ap­ available to young women. Her education included the natu­ pear comic, imparts a robust cadence and exquisite depth to ral history, which grew into a lifelong avocation. Her exten­ the bird's melancholy aspect. Milton goes on to address the sive knowledge of botany, taxonomy, and ornithology bird as a "Chauntress," literally a singer, and implicitly an en­ exemplifies the convergence between science and poetry in chantress: "Thee Chauntress oft the Woods among, I I woo the Romantic era. In her affection for all of nature's crea­ to hear thy Even-Song" (63-64). The nightingale is a seduc­ tures, even the lowly green-chafer and the humble hedgehog, tive female figure who lures the poet ever deeper into the Smith evokes the possibility of a new kind of nature writing, oak woods. Yet only by passing through those dark woods intimate in tone and deeply personal in expression. can the poet discover his poetic vocation. In three sonnets addressed to the nightingale, Smith The same complex theme of danger and desire returns draws upon her knowledge of natural history by evoking the in Paradise Lost (second edition, 1674), where the bird be­ actual presence of the bird: she describes the plaintive sound comes firmly an emblem of Milton's poetic vocation. The of its voice at nightfall as it seeks its missing mate. The night­ word "nightingale" never appears in this passage, but this ingale is represented not merely as a traditional emblem for "wakeful Bird" closely resembles the bird described in "II poetic inspiration, but also as an analogue for Smith's own Penseroso": forlorn circumstances: following an unfortunate marriage to a dissolute and improvident husband, she had fallen into Then feed on thoughts, that voluntary move poverty, misery, and heartache. The pervasive theme of Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful Bird yearning for lost love, and the intensely personal, introspec­ Sings darkling, and in shadiest Covert hid tive quality of her lyric poetry, mark a significant departure Tunes her nocturnal Note. Thus with the Year from the prevailing norms of late eighteenth-century verse. Seasons return, but not to me returns In the first of these three poems, "To the Nightingale," she Day, or the sweet approach of Ev'n or Morn, writes: Or sight of vernal bloom, or Summer's Rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; Poor melancholy bird - that all night long But cloud instead, and ever-during dark Tell'st to the Moon thy tale of tender woe; Surrounds me ... From what sad cause can such sweet sorrow flow, (Book 3, 37-46) And whence this mournful melody of song? (1-4)

Milton refers here to his blindness, which is also (paradoxi­ The epithet "melancholy" comes directly from Milton, and cally) the mark of his poetic insight. Blindness and insight the imagery of the moon has been associated with the night­ are correlative for Milton, as they were for Homer, the blind ingale since Spenser, and so the poem is, in a certain sense,

36 quite conventional. But it is beautifully written, with exqui­ the nightingale's return home to England's forest groves, sitely crafted rhythm, alliteration, and assonance in such where once again it can engage in musical colloquy with lines as "From what sad cause can such sweet sorrow flow." Charlotte: Moreover, as in the second quatrain, this poem is about po­ etic vocation: Borne on the warm wing of the western gale, How tremulously low is heard to float Thy poet's musing fancy would translate Thro' the green budding thorns that fringe the vale, What mean the sounds that swell thy little breast, The early Nightingale's prelusive note. When still at dewy eve thou leavest thy nest, 'Tis Hope's instinctive power that thro' the grove Thus to the listening night to sing thy fate? Tells how benignant Heaven revives the earth; (5-8) 'Tis the soft voice of young and timid Love That calls these melting sounds of sweetness forth. The entire sonnet is composed as a series of rhetorical ques­ tions. The nightingale inspires wonder in the poet, and the With transport, once, sweet bird! I hail'd thy lay, entire poem comprises a meditation, a broadening series of And bade thee welcome to our shades again, inquiries, rather than a series of affirmations about the To charm the wandering poet's pensive way nightingale. And soothe the solitary lover's pain; But now! - such evils in my lot combine, Smith's second poem in the nightingale series, "On the As shut my languid sense - to Hope's dear voice and thine! Departure of the Nightingale," is even more remarkable for (1-14) its engagement with the theme of poetic vocation, as well as its deployment of natural history. She addresses the nightin­ This poem is unusual for Smith because it exudes such a gale in the sonnet's opening lines: warm and hopeful tone. The bird brings the rebirth of springtime and a renewal of inspiration for poetry; it gives Sweet poet of the woods-a long adieu! Smith the hope she needs to go fonvard. The poem turns Farewel, soft minstrel of the early year! against Milton, who called the bird "melancholy." Themati­ Ah! 'twill be long ere thou shalt sing anew, cally the poem is unconventional, or returning to an older And pour thy music on 'the night's dull ear.' convention: the nightingale poetry of the medieval period, Whether on Spring thy wandering flights await, and of Sappho, who saw the nightingale as a messenger of Or whether silent in our groves you dwell ... (1-6) springtime, of hope, of good cheer, and renewal of life. Here the bird is identified with an "instinctive power" that Although the sonnet invokes a distinctly literary nightingale, revives the Earth in springtime, and addressed as a singer it is also very much engaged with the actual facts of natural whose "melting sounds of sweetness" charm the wandering history. In the late eighteenth century, no one knew where poet. Rescued from its melancholy Miltonic associations, the birds go when they disappear in winter. There were two com­ nightingale returns to English poetry as a redemptive female peting hypotheses: do they migrate south, or do they hiber­ figure that embodies the seasonal cycles of nature and the nate, either in hollow trees, or perhaps undenvater? Gilbert healing powers of the Earth. · To a female poet like Smith, White, the author of The Natural History of Selborne ( 1789), was the bird serves as a professional role model in the craft of known to stir his stick in a pond to see if any birds could be poetry, a mentor who offers hope and companionship in a awakened! So in these lines Smith is posing an open scien­ time of desperate pain and solitude. To be sure, Smith re­ tific question: will the birds return north to England in turns to her characteristic themes of depression and melan­ springtime, or are they perhaps hiding in our very midst, choly in the final couplet, and yet hope remains present in sleeping in hollow trees? Wherever they might have gone, the poem's closing words: "to Hope's dear voice and thine!" the nightingales have certainly departed, and their departure Struggling to resist the tug of dejection, the poem still offers bears the pathos of the loss of poetic inspiration. Without hope, borne on the warm winds of spring by the nightingale. the companionship of the nightingale, which is her muse, Smith can no longer sing. Lost in the solitude of winter, Smith's revival of the sonnet form, and her dramatic Smith abandons herself to melancholy, which pervades the reshaping of the nightingale topos, directly influenced the entire collection of Elegaic Sonnets. work of several later poets in the Romantic tradition. In­ deed, there was a boom in the production of nightingale son­ However, an exception to the melancholy tone occurs nets immediately following the first publication of her Elegaic in the best of her three sonnets on the nightingale, "The Re­ Sonnets in 1784. No poet could write a sonnet after 1784 turn of the Nightingale." Written in May, 1791, published in without referencing or somehow being influenced by Char­ a later edition of the Elegiac Sonnets, in form and theme, this lotte Smith. In a very literal sense, Elegaic Sonnets witnessed poem shows a greater sophistication than the first two son­ not only the return of the nightingale, but also the return of nets on nightingales, published in 1784. The poem describes the sonnet form, to English poetry.

37 Robert Southey, for example, penned a "Sonnet: to the I have cited these poems to show the enduring Nightingale" in the early 1790s. It is a dreadful sonnet, but strength of the nightingale archetype. Even when the poet instructive in its dreadfulness. It gets the theme entirely gets it desperately wrong, the poem still inevitably references wrong! The nightingale is an archetype, a deeply interwoven many of the right elements: "darkling Woe," "melancholy in­ complex of themes, and a poet cannot simply ignore those fluence," and many more. The archetype is stronger than themes and write about something else without having the the individual author. Neither sonnet contributes memora­ entire poem fall dead, like a cracked bell. Here are the bly to the art of poetry, but they do show the pervasive influ­ poem's opening lines: ence of Charlotte Smith, both in her revival of the sonnet form and in her plangent use of the nightingale as a full­ Sad songstress of the night, no more I hear blooded living creature, a real bird singing in a real forest .. Thy soften'd warblings meet my pensive ear, As by thy wonted haunts again I rove; Charlotte Smith also had a direct impact upon the Why art thou silent? wherefore sleeps thy lay? early development of Coleridge's poetry. Coleridge's first For faintly fades the sinking orb of day, collection of poems, Sonnets from Various Authors (1796), in­ And yet thy music charms no more the grove. cludes two sonnets by Charlotte Smith, which he copied The shrill bat flutters by; from yon dark tower faithfully from the seventh edition of her Elegaic Stanzas The shrieking owlet hails the shadowy hour ... (1-8) (1795), which contains all three of Smith's nightingale poems. In the preface to his 1796 volume, Coleridge offers a After using the absurdly incongruous term "warblings" to concise definition of the sonnet: "A sonnet then is a short evoke the song of the nightingale, the sonnet takes a wrong poem in which some lonely feeling is developed" (Coleridge, turn into Gothic romance. It's a work of amazing vol. 2, 1139). This purely expressive definition of the sonnet incompetence. is notable for ignoring all the formal features. Coleridge later grudgingly admits that a sonnet should perhaps have four­ teen lines, since "it may as well be fourteen as any other num­ An even more dreadful sonnet was composed by John ber." He goes on to articulate a new and distinctively Thelwall in 1788, "Sonnet to the Nightingale," possibly the Romantic approach to the .representation of nature in po­ worst poem ever written on the nightingale theme. What's etry. Like Charlotte Smith, Coleridge finds that the sonnet wrong with this poem? Thelwall uses (or misuses) the night­ need not be an artificial, purely literary form of expression: ingale motif to represent the loss of male friendship. To his credit, Thelwall does accurately reference the Miltonic Those Sonnets appear to me the most exquisite, in which epithet "darkling," and his poem does enact the word's his­ moral Sentiments, Affections, or Feelings, are deduced from, toric transference from bird to poet, which suggests that the and associated with, the scenery of Nature. Such composi­ archetype has its own strength - there are certain things you tions generate a habit of thought highly favorable to delicacy just can't get wrong about it. But it's downhill all the way of character. They create a sweet and indissoluble union be­ from there: tween the intellectual and the material world. (Coleridge, vol. 2, 1139) Sweet Bird of Sympathy! whose voice alone Sooths the attentive ear of darkling Woe, The final sentence of this passage embodies the very essence Whose strains, responsive to the Wretch's moan, of Coleridge's conception of poetry at this early moment in With softly melancholy influence flow, his poetic career, a conception more fully embodied in "The As thy sweet note thus melts upon my ear, Eolian Harp." According to this view, which is· Neoplatonic I heave the sigh - I shed the starting tear. in flavor, nature and the intellectual world are essentially the For oh! of Lucio - dear, departed friend! - same. By implication, nature embodies the divine ideas, and The fond memorial in that note I find. these divine ideas are also intrinsic to human consciousness; When Joy forbore her cheerful smile to lend, and so whatever one may conceive or imagine is precisely When Fortune lour'd on my benighted mind, what one will encounter in the real world. For Coleridge, Alone, with Friendship's sympathizing strain, then, it is not enough for the poet to be a detached observer He sooth'd my soul, and lull'd my bosom's pain. of picturesque scenery; rather, the poet must seek a "sweet Sweet Bird of Sympathy! for this the tear and indissoluble union" with nature. But how can such Still shall Remembrance shed on Friendship's early bier! (1- union be accomplished? 14) There is one easy answer to this question: marriage! For some readers, "Friendship's early bier" could suggest a Marriage is the natural fulfillment of erotic love, and in his mid-afternoon trip to the pub! This is in fact the poem's cen­ first poem to the nightingale, Coleridge attempts to create tral theme: the speaker misses his convivial friend, Lucio. this kind of union between the intellectual and material But the nightingale imagery simply does not work in this con­ world, using the figure of marriage, but also bringing in the text; the topic is entirely incongruous. motif of the nightingale. In "To the Nightingale," Coleridge

38 might possibly have a real bird in mind, but he addresses it in The most crucial Romantic reappearance of the night­ utterly traditional Miltonic terms, calling it "Philomel," and ingale is the poetry of Keats, whose "Ode to a Nightingale" declaring, "Oft will I tell thee, Minstrel of the Moon! I 'Most (1819), while responding most directly to Milton and Coler­ musical, most melancholy' Bird!" - a direct quotation from idge, further elaborates upon Smith's evocation of the bird Milton's "II Penseroso." The poem offers a tediously conven­ in "The Return of the Nightingale." Like Smith, Keats per­ tional expression of the nightingale's Miltonic associations. sonifies the nightingale as a female singer - specifically as a He addresses the bird as "sister," so it is evidently a (conven­ dryad, or wood nymph - and he invests the bird with an in­ tional) female bird; and in the poem's final lines, Coleridge scrutable sort of happiness that is immune to mortal woe. addresses his fiancee, Sara, in saccharine verses that seem The "Ode to a Nightingale" is rightly regarded as one of the deeply inauthentic: most elusive and ambiguous poems in British Romanticism, and in light of its convoluted literary heritage - from Classi­ That all thy soft diversities of tone, cal mythology and the poetry of John Milton down through Tho' sweeter far than the delicious airs the nightingale poems of Coleridge and Smith - it is best That vibrate from a white-arm'd Lady's harp, regarded as a representing of all the complexity that had What time the languishment of lonely love come to inhabit the idea of nature during the period. Melts in her eye, and heaves her breast of snow, Keats's nightingale embodies a host of contradictions: it is Are not so sweet as is the voice of her, immortal, yet it is also associated with "easeful Death" (line My Sara - best beloved of human kind! 52); it pours forth its soul in ecstasy, yet it inspires thoughts When breathing the pure soul of tenderness, of "faery lands forlorn" (line 70). Every reader of the Ode She thrills me with the Husband's promis'd name! (18-26) must wrestle with these contradictions, and an ecocritical reader is unlikely to seek resolution in any version of the The "thrill" mentioned in the last line is the throb of delayed taut, skeptical irony that was identified with the New Criti­ eroticism, the sexual "thrill" of Coleridge's future marriage cism. Ecocritical readers are more likely to linger in that bed - not a scene that any reader wishes to envision. dark, odorous, enchanted forest where "soft incense hangs upon the boughs" (line 42). Such a forest is not merely a Coleridge did a better job the next time he tackled the poetic reverie; rather, it harks back to a specific moment in theme of the nightingale. In "The Nightingale" (1798), he the historical evolution of the English countryside. In its first memorably addresses the correlation between human con­ fifty lines, "Ode to a Nightingale" evokes the vast, unpeopled sciousness and the natural world. The poem is also an ex­ forests of the medieval period, home to a rich diversity of plicit reshaping of the Miltonic tradition; citing "II flora and fauna. Penseroso," where Milton had addressed the nightingale as a "most musical, most melancholy" bird, Coleridge retorts: "A The recurrent, stubbornly archetypal image of the melancholy bird? Oh! idle thought! I In Nature there is nightingale enables readers of Romantic poetry to discern nothing melancholy" (14-15). Like Charlotte Smith, Coler­ how the idea of nature, and indeed the very meaning of the idge invites the return of the nightingale to English poetry, word "nature," was transformed over the course of the Ro­ rescued from its mythic associations of mindless melancholy, mantic period. The British Romantic writers formulated an and presented instead as a flock of real birds that inhabit a innovative and in many respects original way of understand­ real English grove in early springtime: ing the natural world. Such a collective understanding may authentically be termed "ecological" (and not merely "proto­ But never elsewhere in one place I knew ecological," as Kroeber writes in Ecological Literary Criticism), So many nightingales; and far and near, since, for the first time in the Western intellectual tradition, In wood and thicket, over the wide grove, poetry evinces the essential elements of a modern ecological They answer and provoke each other's song, worldview. Especially in such poets as Charlotte Smith, With skirmish and capricious passagings, Coleridge, and Keats, the Romantic era appeared on the And murmurs musical and swiftjugjug, threshold of an ecological perception, a sensibility that re­ And one low piping·sound more sweet than all gards all of nature as an assemblage of biotic communities Stirring the air with such a harmony, characterized by diversity, complexity, and symbiosis. That should you close your eyes, you might almost Forget it was not day! (55-64) Traditional literary symbols such as the nightingale take on renewed significance in the wake of this ecological The concreteness of the description is captured in the ono­ understanding; no longer a mythic embodiment of melan­ matopoeic language, the "swift jug jug" of the birds' harmo­ choly, the nightingale for Charlotte Smith, for Coleridge, nious voices. Yet Coleridge's nightingale is also a singer or and for Keats, becomes once again a real bird in a real forest, fellow-poet (evidently male) whose voice embodies the pow­ singing its own "swift jug jug" of springtime, of love and joy­ erful, transformative emotions of joy and love. Coleridge fol­ fulness. By being itself, the nightingale takes on the mysteri­ lows Smith in regarding the nightingale as an embodiment of ous complexity of nature, which has the power to give life, to nature, possessed of mysterious powers. sustain it, and to destroy it, without regard to human desire.

39 WORKS CITED 1855; Sappho. Poems of Sappho. Trans. Edwin Marion Cox. 1925; Smith, Charlotte Turner. Poems of Charlotte Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Poetical Works. ed. E. H. Coleridge. Smith. ed. Stuart Curran. 1993;Southey, Robert. Poetical 1912; Hartman, Geoffrey. "Evening Star and Evening Works. 1829; Spenser, Edmund. Works of Edmund Spen­ Land." The Fate of Reading and Other &says. 1975; Keats, ser. ed. Edwin Greenlaw et. al.l932-1949; Thelwall, John.John Keats: Complete Poems. edJack Stillinger.1978; John. Poems Chiefly Written in Retirement. 1802; Williams, Kroeber, Karl. Ecological Literary Criticism: Romantic Im­ Jeni. Inte!]lreting Nightingales: Gender, Class, and Histories. agining and the Biology of Mind.1994;Milton, John. Com­ 1997. plete Poems and Major Prose. ed. Merritt Y. Hughes.1957; Pliny the Elder, Historia Natura/is. Trans. John Bostock.

Wordsworth, Gilpin, and the Vacant Mind

Joseph Viscomi University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

In many a walk of "Lines" in the rock. One could more easily imagine the At Evening or by moonlight, or reclined text written with a lead or slate pencil, like the inscription At midday upon beds of forest moss, "Written with a Pencil upon a Stone in the Wall of the House Have we to Nature and her impulses (An Outhouse), on the Island at Grasmere" (1800), or "Writ­ Of our whole being made free gift,-and when ten with a Slate Pencil upon a Stone, The Largest of a Heap Our trance had left us, oft have we by aid Lying near a Deserted Quarry, upon one of the Islands at Of the impressions which it left behind Rydal" (1800). A text written outdoors with either a lead or Look'd inward on ourselves, and learn'd perhaps slate pencil, though, would fade within a few years. Something of what we are. Wordsworth, "There is Creation in the Eye"(8-16) 1 Nor is my problem imagining someone reading a text inscribed on a stone seat facing a view. Indeed, the image is doubly ironic. First, it means viewing a "country seat" that is I. "Lines left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree" not a country seat, a popular kind of site for picturesque trav­ elers and print collectors, as evinced by such publications as Picturesque Views of the Principal Seats of the Nobility and Gentry, "-Nay, Traveller! rest." So begins the narrator of in England and Wales. By the most Eminent British Artists. With a "Lines left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree which stands near the Description of each Seat (1786-88). Second, it requires one to Lake of Esthwaite, on a desolate part of the shore, yet com­ turn one's back to the landscape, as though using a Claude manding a beautiful prospect," Wordsworth's first poem in glass. This small, brown-tinted convex mirror, which Gilpin the Lyrical Ballads of 1798. The narrator teaches the traveler praised for its ability to transform nature into "the brilliant that nature is, literally, more than meets the eye, while forc­ landscapes of a dream" (Remarks 2 225), reflects and frames ing the reader to examine why this traveler needs to be so scenes to resemble old landscape paintings. Its use requires taught. Knowing who is talking to whom and how their ex­ turning one's back on nature and viewing a reflection rather change is structured enables the reader to see that Words­ than the thing itself. And therein lies the idea of picturesque worth is criticizing both Burke's theory of the sublime and theorizing as mediation, as "pre-established codes of deci­ Gilpin's ideas of the picturesque, as well as working out his sion" (Advertisement to the Lyrical Ballads, 1798) distorting own theories of mind that were to evolve into the "blessed perception and limiting knowledge. Reading text on this seat mood." forces one not only to turn one's back on the view but also requires bending over so that the gesture resembles mooning I know that Charles Lamb called "Lines" an "inscrip­ the landscape more than one would care to admit. If the trav­ tion" and that Geoffrey Hartman wrote a famous essay on the eler bends over to read the text, then in fact he neither sits 2 subject. My problem is not imagining a poem inscribed into nor rests but is actively prevented from resting-or, at the or on a stone seat-even a poem longer than any of Words­ very least, has his resting moment postponed-for the length worth's other inscriptions and epitaphs. Though improbable, of time it takes to read the sixty lines. For travelers to enjoy a one could argue that its length testifies to the recluse's long, seat by courtesy of a man who rejected his fellow man is also prison-like stay, assuming, of course, that he authored the a nice touch of irony. text and, like the six letters of JOANNA "chiseled out" in "rude characters" ("To Joanna" 82), carved the 3,134 letters

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